Horseman

Servants on horseback following the sky car , colored etching by Christoffer Suhr 1822

Horseman in Paul Hoff's funeral procession on January 25, 1928 in Lübeck

Horseman at the funeral of Wilhelm Cuno in 1933

Hamburg pallbearers in the costumes of the horsemen, memorial service for Helmut Schmidt 2015

Reitendiener (also riding servants , after Grimm the High German translation of the Low German rîdendêner (for rîdene dêner )) were originally mounted council servants in the northern German cities. They served councilors and mayors at council meetings and banquets, served as their satellite bodyguards , were couriers, police troops and escorts the delinquents to execution. The Martensmann was also originally a valet.

In Hamburg the custom developed that the horse servants waited for the bride and groom at weddings for a fee, formed the entourage at funerals and carried the coffin to the grave. Mostly they wore a blue, silver-braided outfit, at funerals, however, a mixture of black Dutch and Spanish costume , buckled shoes and funeral swords . This custom was abolished in 1866. On February 7th of the same year Hamburg undertakers formed the St. Anschar funeral association , which since then has provided porters who are dressed similarly to the former horsemen.

In Lüneburg the Reitende-Diener-Straße (originally Reitendienerstraße ) is named after them.

literature

• Ruth Werderitsch: Funeral culture in the 18th century - the horsemen and the vain pomp. In: Lichtwark booklet . No. 72, 2007, ISSN  1862-3549 .
• Cipriano Francisco Gaedechens : The stables and the riding servants. In: Journal of the Association for Hamburg History. 9, 1894, pp. 517-556, ( online , SUB Hamburg).
• Nikolaus Adolf Westphalen: Hamburg's constitution and administration in their gradual development up to the most recent time , Volume 1, Perthes-Besser & Mauke, 1841, pp. 75-76, ( online ).
• Johann Christian Plath : Views of the Free Hanseatic City of Hamburg and its surroundings , Part 2, Friedrich Wilmans, Frankfurt / M., 1828, footnote pp. 202–203, ( online ).
• Johann Balthasar Hempel: Detailed information from the h. Ritter Georgio , and what bears his name, (publisher = illegible), 1722, pp. 258–260, ( online ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Funeral parlor St. Anschar von 1866 GmbH ; accessed on May 11, 2018
2. ^ Julius Stinde (1901) ( Memento from February 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive ); Retrieved December 13, 2008

Web links

Commons : Reitendiener  - Collection of images, videos and audio files